Road of the Dead by Kevin Brooks

thanks,” he told her.
    “You sure?”
    He nodded.
    “Ruben?” she said, offering the wine bottle to me.
    I shook my head. “Could I have some water, please?”
    As she poured me a glass of water, Vince cracked open a couple of beers and passed one to Cole before he could say no.
    “Cheers,” said Vince, taking a long drink.
    His speech was slightly slurred, so I guessed this wasn’t his first beer of the evening. Cole raised his can to him but didn’t drink from it. I clinked glasses with Abbie. She took a big slurp of wine, and then we all got stuck into the food.
    “So,” said Vince, chewing on a chicken leg, “they wouldn’t let you stay at the Bridge, then?”
    I looked at Cole. His face said— You tell him. I already had told him, on the phone earlier on, but I guessed this was just a way to get the conversation going, so I played along and told him what had happened all over again. I didn’t go into any details, and I didn’t mention anything about the policeman, but I got the feeling he already knew about that.
    “Yeah, well,” he said when I’d finished, “you’re probably better off here, anyway. The Bridge is a bit of a shit-hole, to be honest.”
    “Is it closing down?” Cole asked him.
    Vince stopped chewing for a moment. His eyes blinked a couple of times. Then he started chewing again. “Who told you that?” he asked Cole.
    “No one. It just looked like it was closing down. The dining room—”
    “Oh right, yeah…it’s being refurbished.”
    “What about the rest of the village?” said Cole. “The houses, the shops, the gas station—are they all being refurbished, too?”
    A hint of annoyance darkened Vince’s face. He wiped his mouth with a napkin and reached for his can of beer.“There’s a lot of redevelopment work going on,” he said, “a lot of reinvestment. It’s happening all over the moor. We were hit really hard by the foot-and-mouth thing a few years ago…the whole moor was closed off for months.” He looked at Abbie. “Things were pretty rough for a while, weren’t they?”
    Abbie nodded. “I’d only been here a few months. Mum was ill, the farm was shut down…it was really tough. A lot of places went under—farms, pubs, restaurants—”
    “How did you manage?”
    Abbie glanced at Vince, then back at Cole. “Well, it was a struggle…”
    “But you survived?”
    She just looked at him for a moment, then started eating again. Cole opened a bottle of water and poured some into a glass.
    “Not drinking your beer?” said Vince.
    “Not right now.”
    Vince shrugged and bit off a chunk of bread. “I hear there was a bit of trouble up at the gas station earlier?”
    Cole shrugged. “It was nothing—just a scuffle.”
    “Yeah? It must have been some scuffle. Big Davy’s still in the hospital.”
    “Big Davy?”
    “Yeah, the guy you hit—Big Davy Franks. I’d watch out for him if I were you. He’s not going to forget what you did to him.”
    “He’s not supposed to. Who’s the slink in the red suit?”
    “What?”
    “The skinny little guy with the red hair—the one you were talking to at the gas station. What’s his name?”
    “Redman,” Vince replied cautiously. “Sean Redman. Everyone calls him Red. Why do you—?”
    “What does he do?”
    “What?”
    Cole had stopped eating now. He was just sitting there staring at Vince, burning questions into his eyes. I could tell that Vince was starting to get annoyed with it. Not that I cared—I was still trying to come to terms with the fact that Red Suit was actually called Red.
    “This Redman,” Cole repeated. “What does he do?”
    Vince frowned. “He doesn’t do anything. He just…I don’t know. He does a few odd jobs now and then. A bit of farmwork, a bit of building…whatever comes along. Why do you want to know?”
    “Just curious,” said Cole. “I was wondering how he knew who we were, that’s all.”
    Vince shrugged. “You know what it’s like in a place like